Two Cabins Lost in Saturday Fires

Members of the DeKalb County Volunteer Fire Department were dispatched to a reported structure fire around 5:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon in a remote area of the county off of Adamson Branch Road in Liberty.
Two cabins, belonging to Walter J. Gordon of Florida, were destroyed but firefighters managed to keep the blaze from reaching three other structures nearby also belonging to Gordon including another cabin, a storage outbuilding, and a three bay garage.
Chief Donny Green says that although the Liberty, Temperance Hall, and DeKalb County Fire Department Main Station responded with pumpers, firefighters could not get equipment to the scene due to the poor access drive that led approximately one mile through a wooded area to the location where not only one, but two cabins were fully involved and threatening three more structures nearby. The fire had also spread into the wooded areas on each side of the steep ridge where the structures were located.
Green says firefighters were able to gain access with the department’s brush truck and called for mutual aid assistance from Cannon County’s Short Mountain and Eastside Fire Departments who responded with 4 X 4 brush trucks.
Although the two fully involved cabins were totally lost, Green says firefighters did manage to prevent the other three structures from becoming involved. The DeKalb County Fire Department’s Wildland Task Force also worked in coordination with the Tennessee Division of Forestry to contain and extinguish the fire.
Chief Green says that in spite of the problem of having very poor access for firefighters and equipment, the department did a great job, working with Tennessee Division of Forestry and Cannon County mutual aid departments, in minimizing the additional potential losses to the other threatened structures and the many acres of woodland that became involved. He says the department located the owner, Walter J. Gordon, who uses this property as a secondary home and has his primary residence in Florida. No one was at the premises at the time of the incident and no one was injured.